


Here I Remain

by calapine



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (TV Movie 1996)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:15:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23759713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calapine/pseuds/calapine
Summary: When he asked her to come with him, she should have said no.
Relationships: Eighth Doctor/Grace Holloway
Kudos: 4





	Here I Remain

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in 2005.

_Then._

At the top of the universe and gazing down. Luckily, vertigo has never been a problem, once you’ve got the gist of a new body, anyway.

It will be a tourist spot, but you’re far too early for all of that because she’d roll her eyes at the neon lights and cheap restaurants. And parking space will always be very limited, even for the traveller discerning enough to have a dimensionally transcendental ship.

You contemplate poking your head above/out of/below the clouds of particles marking the end of existence, but you don’t think the universe would be very amused (probably has sharp edges, always did have a sadistic sense of humour.)

Quiet. You can look down (look up) and there’s the whole of creation spiralling away from you. It hurts because it’s perfect and shining. The air is pure wonder and you breath deeply. Giddy like a child, and you’d dance, with the orchestra playing in your head to a rapt audience.

But there’s a rogue violinist in the string section.

“It’s very pretty,” she says, and leaves you to stare for hours.

_Later._

This is not the same day, but the days stretch to years because you both leave sleep to the reptiles.

She wants moments. Craves them like sugar, or caffeine. She’s been drinking a lot of coffee lately and she can’t sleep for more than a few hours at a time.

You live amidst somebody else’s war, and she never bothered to ask about sides and diplomacy and whether they remember what they’re fighting for or if believe in a just cause, because she’s fighting death on dozens of fronts, saving so many lives, and she needs the whole universe behind her.

You showed her that, once; of course, but she’s probably forgotten. Blood gets into her eyes, and taints her world a dark red rose.

She used to be a romantic.

You’d never notice, normally, but she’s fighting harder than you are (not fair, not fair!), and she’s falling into little pieces that you’re scared to pick up because it’s all shards of melting ice and your fingers are too warm.

“We could...”

“No!” Fierce and terrible, and you know that you have to do something terribly clever to end the war now.

You won’t lose her.

_Now_

Alien ship from an alien race, but he knows she feels more at home here than any world they’ve visited.

She drank a little after they left, alone and silent; he tastes the wine on her lips (perfect lips, soft and undamaged, though he knows where the scars are under her clothes.). And her eyes are a little cloudy, but it’s tears, not alcohol. Her face is clean and beautiful, and her hands fall through his curls and trace the sides of his face.

She pretends she is blind and that all that needs is to feel. He’s warm and he’s not dead and for a little while that is all she will need.

“I did the best I could.”

So he holds her close and maybe she knows he’s lying when he tells her that there won’t be any more wars.

In the morning, she asks a lot of questions.

Easy answers don’t exist, and he can’t explain what they’re doing, not really. It’s not a maths problem for him, but she won’t accept a history essay as an answer.

Yes and no.

Yes, _but_ no.

Hands spread, placating, and she storms out because she’s a different sort of scientist who doesn’t believe in ignorance.

_The End._

She stares at stars hoping they’ll burn her sight; too distant, too cold. Her eyes are safe, but her imagination plays across all the pinpricks of other people’s suns. There’s a part of her out there, and space is big, but she has gloves, scarf and hat and is cosy and warm in San Francisco’s winter.

Home and safe, she pinches herself often to check it’s still real.

Sometimes, when she’s waking and all the dreams are half-real, she thinks she was a coward, that bravery is getting herself killed in someone else’s fight, that sleep is for tortoises and normal life is a little but dull. Most of the time she’s an awful lot saner.

Nothing bad ever really happens here. Normality is her comfort blanket, and she spends far too long choosing which toothpaste to buy, and agonising over the needlessly complicated choices involved when ordering a caffeinated beverage. It’s the little things that make her sparkle.

This is where she wants to be because nobody ever had to prove to her that they were small and insignificant lives on a strange little world that the rest of the universe tended to disdain.

And nobody had to tell her that those little lives mattered oh so very much.

She is a doctor, after all, and she knows how to spell compassion.

And these are the people that she can help best.

_The Beginning_

You pretend not to recognise him and he plays along. You go for coffee together (end up with cakes too, real dairy cream) and flirt with your eyes and your lips.

He lies, and pretends to be British and a professor and on sabbatical. You say it all sounds delightfully quaint and give him your number.

At some point you laugh. Unselfconsciously. It makes you feel lighter. Younger.

You bought the cakes, so he pays for the coffee.

And neither of you knows how this is going to end.


End file.
